


Relics

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Canon Era, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2019-09-27 21:29:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17169734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Katherine loses her father, and gains a box full of unwanted memories.





	Relics

If losing her father had any effect in particular upon Katherine, she didn’t show it. 

 

“I haven’t seen him for years,” she explained to Jack, after her mother called with the news. Her voice had a little too much cheer and far too much nonchalance. “So, I’ll go from never seeing him to never seeing him. The only thing that’s changed is that I don’t have to be afraid of him showing up someday when I least expect it.”

She finished her speech by kissing Jack so quickly and firmly that he didn’t dare to question her. Whether or not what she was saying was precisely true, it was clearly important to her just then, and he wasn’t about to disrespect her by questioning it. Besides, Jack understood what it meant to want to erase the past. There were bits about his own history that he’d waited until years into their marriage to ever speak of with Katherine, not because he didn’t want her to know, but because he hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Katherine would say what she wanted to say when she wanted to say it, and not before. 

As the days passed, Jack tried to be aware of Katherine’s loss when interacting with her, but it was easy to forget when she herself seemed to have forgotten. She talked and laughed, buried herself in her work, and was affectionate in turns. She burnt her toast, passed an afternoon chatting with Crutchie, invited Davey over for cards on Thursday, and ranted about her editor. At night she slept soundly curled up besides Jack, and in the morning she consumed too much coffee. She was, in short, herself, brilliant and bright and no different than she ever was. 

Katherine made plans to go to the funeral, and backed out at the last minute because she really needed to finish her story. That night she read the article she had been working on to Jack, and he splurged on buying a small bag of peaches, because he knew she liked them and wanted her to feel happy. 

Two days after the funeral a box appeared on the doorstep of the Kelly household, and Katherine brought it inside. It was filled to the brim with things from home that she hadn’t seen in years – an old typewriter that she had played on as a child, a doll that her daddy had given her for her fourth birthday, its hair tangled and a crack running through its porcelain face. There was the scarlet colored blanket that she had slept with as a child because her father had told her that ghosts were afraid of the color red, and a few pieces of her very earliest writing tied up with blue ribbon.

When Jack came home a few hours later he found Katherine crouched in the floor beside the box, her forehead resting in her hands. He didn’t know what all that stuff she’d been looking at was, but he knew the effect that it had had upon her. He knelt down at her side. His hands were dirty from a long morning at work, but he threaded them through her long hair anyway, knowing that she wouldn’t mind. 

“Hi,” she said, perking up like somebody who believed she needed to. Her eyes were watery like she’d either been crying or trying not to cry. 

“Hey there.”

Katherine shifted a bit so that she was in a more comfortable position, wiped her eyes, and felt Jack’s arms wrap around her.

“I’m okay, actually,” she hastened to explain. 

“You sure about that? You can rethink it if you wanna.” 

Katherine cast him something like a smile, “It’s my mother. She sent these things over. She wanted to make me remember the good times I had with her husband.” 

Jack nodded. “And…?”

“I guess you could say she was successful.” 

Jack made a sympathetic sound in the back of his throat, but Katherine shook her head. 

“Can you believe I was his favorite kid when I was very little?” 

“It don’t strike me as that hard to believe. I bet you were…”

“Adorable,” Katherine interrupted. “Not to sound vain, but I really was.” 

“And smart.”

“I could read and write at three,” Katherine said. “He was really proud of that. That’s why he gave me the typewriter. He thought I would just bang away at it, but as soon as I got my hands on it I wrote a story and gave it to him. It was about a rabbit who got thrown in prison… for stealing lettuce. We used to have rabbits in our garden at the time, and father was always calling exterminators and putting out poison to try and get rid of them.”

“What happened to the rabbit?” Jack asked.

“He got the death penalty and the village rejoiced,” Katherine said, with something like a blush rising on her cheeks. 

“That’s harsh, Ace.”

“Papa and I got along really well before I started having opinions of my own.” Katherine stood up all at once, brushing off her skirts. “Anyway, the man my mother wants me to miss isn’t somebody I’ve seen since I was seven years old. Even then… well, it wasn’t real, was it?”

Katherine’s smile was watery. Jack pulled her in for a hug, “You’re allowed to miss him, you know. In any way you want to. He was your Pa.” 

Katherine nodded against his shirt, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. Jack held her until she was ready to let go.

“He wasn’t for very long,” Katherine said firmly. Jack just nodded.

“What do you want to do with this box?” He asked. He didn’t think he could just leave it in the middle of the floor like a bomb waiting to go off… not unless Katherine wanted him to, that was.

“Put it in the attic,” Katherine said. “I might want these things someday, but not now.” 

“Alright,” Jack said, picking up the relics of the girl who had been Katherine Pulitzer, and preparing to stow them away somewhere where Katherine Kelly could find them, should she ever want to revisit that child.


End file.
